Driving My Mercedes To Italy – Day 14 Caribbean Cruisin’

CARTAGENA, Colombia

As my 1973 Mercedes-Benz 450 SL, loaded inside a container bound for Italy, left here early today onboard the Duesseldorf Express cargo ship, I was struck by what a big adventure this car is on. Too bad it is locked inside a windowless container.

I mean, it sort of reminds me of the story many years ago of the Midwest couple whose pink plastic lawn flamingoes were “kidnapped” and went on a worldwide odyssey. The “kidnappers” would mail the couple postcards of the flamingoes in assorted exotic locations, with no explanation (and no ransom notes). After a couple of years, the flamingoes turned back up in the couple’s yard again. Again, with no explanation.

My Mercedes is on the same kind of journey, as I track it from the port of Los Angeles where it was picked up and loaded on the Duesseldorf Express; to Manzanillo, Mexico; to the Panama Canal; to Cartagena, and now cruising the Caribbean Sea to Caucedo in the Dominican Republic. After that it’s across the Atlantic to Lisbon, then Morocco, Spain, Sardinia, etc. The itinerary is pretty interesting, and educational for me to follow vicariously, because I’ve only been a handful of those places myself. – although I have done two trans-Atlantic crossings.

And the cargo ship experience itself is a whole new world. I was looking on the Hapag-Lloyd website, to see if I could get any new information on the Duesseldorf Express (I couldn’t), but at one point I was asked, “Are you interested in a career onboard?”

Actually, no. It seems like a hard life. On the move 24/7; seldom in sight of land, long days of seemingly endless seas. Interesting to think about, but not for me.